by Andrea Eames
‘Throw them again,’ said a voice in my ear. Baba’s voice! I sat up so quickly that I banged my head on the pipe. The voice was inside, however, drifting out to me on a breeze. That breeze must have been looking to cause trouble.
‘I have thrown them again. They say the same thing,’ said the N’anga.
‘You will not tell!’
‘I must.’
‘N’anga, please …’ and the sound of Amai’s cupped hands clapping. Hazvinei wailed, and Baba raised his voice again. I wished for ear-lids as well as eye-lids, to close out these sounds.
When I reached my spot again I sat cross-legged and listened to my heart boom and slosh in my chest. I could not hear words now, just the angry voices that rose and fell. I wrapped my arms around my head, so that I could not hear, and sat like that even when the sun started to melt my skin into sweat that ran down from my elbows into my ears.
Amai and Hazvinei emerged from the hut.
‘Mai!’ I stood on shaky legs. She did not look at me.
‘Where is Baba?’
‘He is inside talking to the N’anga. We must go home and get dinner ready for him, yes, Tinashe?’
‘Yes, Amai,’ I said. ‘What did the N’anga say? About Hazvinei?’
‘He said that she is a good girl,’ said Amai, ‘and that we must look after her.’
‘But …’ I could not say what I had heard.
Amai took my hand. ‘Let us go home.’
Baba came back late at night, smelling of salt and beer. Amai had already given Hazvinei and me our dinners, and Hazvinei slept, but I could not. I wanted to see Baba.
‘Manheru.’ Baba looked tired. Amai poured him a cup of tea and we sat in silence. Baba’s eyes were red at the edges, and his hand shook when he lifted the enamel cup. I sat still, breathing only shallow gulps of the smoky air, as if I could take up less space that way.
‘Is everything all right, Baba?’
‘Yes, Tinashe.’
‘What did the N’anga say?’
‘It is time for bed, Tinashe.’
Still I hovered. ‘Did he say anything about me?’
‘About you?’ Baba looked as if he were going to say no, but changed his mind. ‘Yes, Tinashe. He did have something to say to you.’
I swallowed, and felt my mboro shrink in my trousers.
‘He told me to tell you that you must look after your sister, Tinashe.’
I almost wet myself in relief.
‘He said, make sure that Tinashe takes care of Hazvinei. Make sure he watches over her.’ Baba put his hand on my shoulder. ‘And I want that too, Tinashe. You must take care of your sister.’
‘Yes, Baba.’
‘You must stay with her always and make sure that she does not get into trouble.’
‘Yes, Baba.’
‘You promise me?’
‘Yes, Baba.’
‘Say it.’
‘I promise.’
‘Good.’ He released me. ‘And one more thing, Tinashe.’
‘Yes, Baba?’
‘You are not to go to the N’anga’s hut, or talk to him ever again. He is not a good man for you to know. Yes?’
‘Yes, Baba.’
‘You will remember these things?’
How could I not remember? If I have any sort of talent, it is a talent for remembering. I remember things that everyone else forgets. I suppose, in my own way, I am cursed.
‘Good. Good night, Tinashe. Sleep well.’
The N’anga came to visit us in the morning. Baba answered the door. He showed no surprise, as if he had expected this.
‘Tinashe, wait outside.’
I sat on the stoep and watched a swarm of red ants dissect and carry away a dead bird. Only the feet remained when the N’anga emerged from the house. I shrank back to give him room to pass, but instead he stooped and breathed a foul stink of air into my face.
‘Your sister has brought misfortune to your family,’ he said, ‘As I said she would.’
‘What do you mean?’ I tried to turn my face away. I felt the heat of his laugh on my cheek.
‘Ask your Baba.’ And then he was gone.
Chapter Twelve
I DID NOT have to wait long.
Baba and Amai kept Hazvinei indoors, but that did not stop the whispering. Baba barely spoke to me. No one came to our house. No one greeted us when we passed them in the street. Even the aunties crossed the road to avoid us, and Simon-from-the-bottle-store would not pay me for the empty bottles I brought him. The N’anga did not visit us again, but we saw him speaking to groups of people in the kopje. They glanced at our house and shook their heads.
I dreamed of old women in red and black masks.
Babamukuru telephoned to see if Hazvinei was better, and if it was safe for Abel to visit. Baba told him that Hazvinei was still unwell. When he had finished talking, Baba left the kitchen without even glancing at me and went straight to Hazvinei’s bedroom.
Have you noticed how bad fortune comes to you like an eagle out of the blue sky, grasping you in its claws before you can squeak or run? When you look back, when the danger has passed, you see that there were signs. Flies buzzing above the water. The smell of blocked drains. Amai held her nose when we walked to the store, and we made jokes about it being caused by the old men who stood outside the shebeen.
‘It is because of that girl,’ the villagers said. ‘She interfered with the spirits, and now they are punishing us.’
Cholera came to the kopje. It covered us in a swamp of illness, infested with rumours and lies, and it felt as if the whole village were haunted. Our family slept all in one bed again, for the first time in many years, as if we could keep one another safe by staying close. Baba, Amai, Tinashe and Hazvinei, crammed together in the hot and sweaty room. Our heads were so close together on the pillow that I imagined I could hear everyone’s thoughts, and I could not sleep with all the racket. The wind growled and snarled outside. I heard it scratching at the windows and doors. The white men vanished like curling smoke, scared off by the disease.
We stayed inside for a week. Hazvinei and I were not allowed to go to school. Instead, we spent our time fighting and pinching each other indoors.
When the week ended, we thought we had escaped. We thought that all those hours Amai had spent praying on her knees had saved us from the plague. She pleaded with God for hours and hours, her hands clasped so tightly that her brown skin turned white at the joints, as if she believed that the tighter she gripped her hands together, the more effective her prayers would be. Even Baba got down on the floor next to her and prayed, although he kept his eyes open. I knew that keeping your eyes open meant Mwari would not hear you. Amai had told me. But I said nothing.
‘It is the njuzu,’ said Hazvinei one night.
‘What?’
‘The njuzu. The one I talked to.’
‘Hazvinei, this is no time for your ghost stories.’
She stared at me. ‘The njuzu told me that this sickness would come. She told me I would fall sick. But she told me that I would recover.’
‘Did she say anything about the rest of us?’ I asked. I kept a smile on my face so that Hazvinei would think I was joking, that I did not really believe her. But I did.
‘No,’ said Hazvinei. She turned the smooth curve of her face away from me. ‘She did not mention you.’
Hazvinei was the first of us to fall sick. When we woke up one morning, she did not. Towards noon, she voided her bowels and moaned. I knew she was humiliated, which was a comfort – as people got sicker and sicker with the cholera, they became too ill to remember what embarrassment was. Hazvinei still knew. That meant she was not dying – not yet. Amai stripped the sheets from the bed to wash them.
‘We need to move her,’ she said.
Hazvinei moaned. She had still not opened her eyes. She drew her knees right up to her chest.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said Amai.
Together we lifted Hazvinei off the bed. She felt light and
bony in my arms, like a vervet monkey instead of a human girl. Her ankles and feet were naked and vulnerable. I held her while Amai put the new sheets on the bed, and then we rolled Hazvinei onto it. Her body went rigid, and the air filled with the swampy, sick smell of diarrhoea.
‘Go and get some rags,’ Amai told me, and I went outside to rip up old cloths, soak them in the bucket and bring them back in.
Amai pulled Hazvinei’s nightdress up and wiped her buttocks gently. The diarrhoea was watery, thin and pale, soaking through the cloth as soon as it touched it. It looked like goat’s milk, or the water in which Amai rinsed the rice. When Amai had finished, she held Hazvinei as if she were still a baby, rocking her gently through her convulsions, while I brought her rag after rag soaked in cold water.
Hazvinei was no longer just herself, but an object, a totem. The neighbourhood kids crept up to our house to peer in at her through the windows. When I yelled at them, they ran away in terror and excitement. Hazvinei had become one of the ghosts in her own stories; a tale told at night to frighten local children.
The cholera spread quickly, after Hazvinei; or because of Hazvinei, if you listened to the rumours. At first we heard the names of those who had been infected, but soon there was no one on the streets to tell tales and name names.
I sat by Hazvinei’s bed, feeling a white worm of guilt writhe in my gut. I felt like dead meat, rotten and seeping, worth nothing. I helped Amai change the sheets and dribble water into Hazvinei’s mouth. Baba came in every morning before work – he could not afford to stop working – but he did not speak to me. He bent over Hazvinei, touched her damp forehead, and then left the room. I knew that he thought this was all my fault for letting Hazvinei go to the N’anga’s ceremony.
‘He is angry, Tinashe,’ Amai whispered to me. ‘But he loves you. It will be all right.’ She handed me another bucket to empty.
I stopped going to school. I spent all my time by Hazvinei’s side, memorising her face until I could tell by the smallest bead of sweat whether she needed fresh water or clean sheets. I made sure that Baba saw me sitting there, and on the third day, he relented.
‘Good boy, Tinashe,’ he said when he saw me emptying Hazvinei’s bucket outside.
Because we spent all our time watching Hazvinei’s yellow, old-woman face, we did not see Baba getting sick. I do not think that even Baba noticed, until he collapsed. Two of his friends brought him home, pale and crusted with vomit. When Amai saw him, she started to wail. She did not stop until he was on his bed, and then she became a nurse again and comforted and crooned over him while she fetched water and buckets. I felt the spirits closing in around the house. They were the black fur at the edge of my vision; the dank, musty scent that closed my throat and reached fat fingers down my nostrils, stifling my breath; the laughter in the night. I felt them coming, walking on two feet like men, a silent, waiting army surrounding us, waiting to be fed. I could not hold them back. I was not strong enough. Perhaps Hazvinei would have been able to, but she was sick too and could not help me.
I did not let Amai or Baba see the spirits, though. I helped Amai nurse Baba and Hazvinei, and I did the chores. The thin, watery smiles from Baba would keep the leopards at bay for a while at least.
Baba was more worried about Hazvinei than about himself, of course. ‘I am a warrior, Tinashe,’ he said through cracked lips. ‘I will be fine.’
Hazvinei did not even know that Baba was sick. Amai and I ran around all day with water and clean cloths, and she lay with her head to the wall. We could not tell her; there was nothing she could do. After two more days of this, my father looked like an old man. He was shrunken and dry, wrinkled on the bed. He smelled of bad diarrhoea, a smell worse than the manure on the fields or the smell of the Blair toilet at school. The blanket was stained with something that looked like tea – brown and watery.
The day my father died was a bright, fragrant day, the ground damp and steaming. The rains had come in earnest at last, and drenched us every evening.
‘Tinashe.’ He hooked one of his fingers at me. ‘Come.’
Amai watched me as I walked to him. Her eyes were so tired that the whites had become yellows. She looked ugly, and I felt guilty for thinking that she looked ugly when she was so sad and everything was so terrible.
‘Baba.’ I rested my head on his chest. His breath was a seed rattling in a gourd. I heard the creak and click of his ribs.
‘Take care of your sister.’ I thought he had said this, but I realised that it was only in my head. Baba had said nothing more, and could not.
‘Go now, Tinashe,’ said Amai. I looked back at the bed and, as I watched, a fly that had been buzzing around the room landed on Baba’s eyeball, right on the milky surface. Baba did not blink, or move.
‘Tinashe. Go,’ said Amai. I went outside and sat on the stoep to watch a line of ants form around a discarded mango pip. After a few moments I heard wailing from inside, and I felt a stream of noise that smelled and tasted like vomit rise up my throat and out of my mouth.
We did not tell Hazvinei. Amai could not, I think. She did not even touch Baba’s body after he had died.
Hazvinei raged and fought against the cholera, silently. She hardly moved. She stared at the ceiling with her teeth clenched and went somewhere else in her head.
Amai became an old woman in those few days. She grew thin. Her cheeks lost their shine. She spent most of her time at Hazvinei’s bedside, holding a soaked cloth to her forehead or dripping water into her mouth. We had been told to feed the sick water with sugar in it. I seemed to spend all day stirring clumps of our stale, sticky sugar into water. There were always a few crumbs that refused to separate and sank to the bottom. When I wasn’t making sugar-water, I was opening all the windows that I could and scrubbing everything, even the walls, to get the smell of sickness out of them – a cloying, green smell, like avocados rotting on the ground. It clung to everything, even to my own hair and skin. I liked to do this. I liked to work. It stopped me from remembering.
Hazvinei stirred. She opened her eyes. She stared up at the ceiling, bleakly, as if she were disappointed to have woken up in such a world. The room seemed shabbier – the patches of mould on the walls that Amai could not get out, even with the strongest bleach, seemed to have spread.
‘Hazvinei,’ I said.
She rolled her head on the pillow until it faced me.
‘Hazvinei,’ I said. I felt sad to tell her this news, but I also felt a strange thrill. Bearing bad news makes you very powerful. All you need to do is to force air up through your lungs to your mouth and teeth and shape a few words, and you change the world.
‘Baba is dead,’ I told her.
No tears. She looked at me for several minutes without words. I did not speak either; just twisted my hands in my lap.
Hazvinei turned her head away from me on the pillow, and I left the room. She slept for another week, and when she was not asleep she was glaring at the ceiling, with her teeth grinding together and her jaw jutting out.
I did not want to believe that Amai was sick too, even when I saw the signs. I could see that her face was waxy, and had gone from the deep shine of a macadamia nut to the colour of the brown scum that floated on the surface of the waterhole. I could see that she was tired, and thinner. But I said nothing. Amai could not be sick. Baba could not be dead. None of this could be real.
It was when I was changing Hazvinei’s blankets that I knew. I heard a noise, and stepped outside to find Amai kneeling on the polished step, a puddle of vomit on the ground in front of her.
‘Mai!’
‘I am fine, Tinashe.’ She was too tired to put any enthusiasm into her lie, but she did smile and rest a hand on my shoulder. ‘Check on Hazvinei, yes? I’m going to lie down.’
I sat by Hazvinei. She was in one of her strange waking states, with her eyes open and dry.
‘Amai is sick,’ I said.
She said nothing. She did not even move.
‘Say something.’
She rolled her eyes towards me, but her lips did not move.
‘Say something!’
Hazvinei stared at me for a moment, and then looked away again. We sat there for hours. I watched my shadow move on the wall, and I pressed a hand against it, as if I could stop time moving. As the sun set, the shadow grew paler, until it was white under my black hand. Outside, the leopards laughed.
Amai grew worse. I brought her fresh water as often as I could, running with the bucket from the bottom of the kopje all the way to the top. If the disease were a leopard, I could have wrestled with it, tried to kill it, even if it consumed me too. But all I could do here was carry the water bucket up and down, up and down the kopje, and wipe the foreheads of my two family members with a damp cloth to take away the worst of the sweats, and clean up the diarrhoea that soaked into the sheets and into the floor. After a few days I did not even notice the smell.
‘I should write to the aunties,’ I said. ‘We should send someone to get them.’
‘No, it will be fine,’ said Amai, and smiled.
‘How is your father?’ she would ask sometimes, when she had forgotten. I did not know whether to tell the truth or lie, so I did not answer, even when she became more insistent. She always remembered on her own, anyway – after a while.
I did not know what to do with Baba’s body. It lay on his bed for three days, until it started to smell and flies started buzzing around it like tiny vultures. When the house smelled of rotting food, I knew I had to put Baba somewhere. I went to one of our neighbours.
‘Please help me,’ I said. ‘Baba is dead.’
The man shrank against his doorframe. ‘The cholera?’
‘Yes, and I do not know what to do with his body.’
‘Ask your mother,’ said the man, and was about to go back inside when I said, ‘She is sick too. And my sister.’
‘What has your family done, to be punished this way?’ he asked, but I saw the knowledge in his eyes.
